I have had a small, private adventure this afternoon.
It was not actually a very nice adventure, I am sorry to say.
I telephoned my sister. This was not the adventure. My sister is a real grown-up, despite being five years younger than me, and is a doctor. I mean the proper sort, the medical sort, not just the sort that has spent too long hanging about a university trying to avoid real employment.
Hence I telephoned her to ask for some sensibly informed advice about my sore toe. This was because it was throbbing so dramatically that I was beginning to feel more sorry for myself than even I think is justified.
I examined it and discovered that there was a large, squishy, blood-filled blister sitting all around the edges of my toenail.
I sent a text to my sister to ask what I should do.
In a remarkable display of medical sang-froid, she rang me back whilst she was having her lunch.
Burst it, she said. You could also get a hot needle and poke it into the nail. That would let the blood out.
Will it hurt? I asked, timidly.
Yes, she said, through sandwich, and it will be messy. But only when the hot bit of the needle goes through the nail and jabs into the skin underneath. Keep it all clean, though, because if you get an infection it might spread to your very bones, and then terrible things will happen.
I looked this up on Google afterwards, and she was right. That is the sort of thing that leads to you getting your toe sawn off.
After almost a whole micro-second consideration, I also decided I would not do the nail-and-hot-needle thing.
I did not mind the idea of bursting the blister quite so much, so I armed myself with Germolene, a tissue and a needle, and bursted it.
Readers, it was not nice.
There was a disgusting rush of disgusting biological stuff, some of which was blood and some of which was not. I had to shout Oliver to bring some more tissue. Then I tried to put a plaster on it but the plaster was blood-soaked almost straight away, and fell off.
By the time it had finished bleeding my toenail was so loose it was wobbling, and all of the skin around it was yellow instead of purple, and saggy looking. I was glad I had not done the hot-needle-in-the-toenail thing, because all of the blood had gone from underneath it without my needing to resort to such terrifying savagery
I looked at it with somewhat nauseated interest for a little while, and telephoned Mark to tell him all about it. Fortunately he was not having his lunch.
Then I bandaged it all up, in a self-nurturing sort of way, murmuring words of sympathy to myself, and limped off to bring the washing in. Then I took some more drugs because it turns out that it still hurts anyway.
I took Oliver to work afterwards, and Ritalin Boy to his Other Grandma’s, because the weekend is coming and he will have a better time there with his cousins than at our house by himself whilst we are all at work. Then I went to work myself, by which I mean that I am now sitting on the taxi rank in the late afternoon sunshine. This is really just the sort of shirk about which one can have a clear conscience, because I am doing absolutely nothing whatsoever, but nevertheless trying my hardest to earn a living. There are times when I am very glad not to have a real job.
I did try and warn you at the beginning.
I am sorry if you were not paying attention and have been put off your cornflakes.
